User:Brian P. Josey/Notebook/2009/09/22

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ATP and GTP Stability and pH

We needed to know how to keep both ATP and GTP stable in a buffer solution and what pH could be used to prevent autohydrolysis. For ATP, it appears that a higher pH leads to a greater free energy for the hydrolysis of ATP. A link to my reference can be found at http://www.life.illinois.edu/crofts/bioph354/atp_hydrolysis.html.

I figure that it would not be different for GTP, that a higher pH would lead to a greater stability, but I cannot currently find any references to back up my opinion. My reasoning is that hydrolysis only deals with the chain of phosphate groups, and has nothing to do with the nucleotide base. So it would not matter if it was ATP, GTP, TTP or whatever. Second, the only real difference between GTP and ATP is that is an additional primary amine on GTP, making it more basic, and there is not a carbonyl group on GTP. I believe that this would not effect the stability at all for GTP, so I am inclined to say that a greater pH would increase stability in GTP, like it does in ATP. However, because I can't find a resource to back up my claim, I will not say it with complete certainty. I am still looking for a resource.

Filing Cabinet Organization

I finally finished organizing the short filing cabinet, a project that I started last week, but got side tracked by Larry's constants project. In general, the files are organized alphabetically with the top shelf containing letters A-I, and the bottom shelf containing letters K-Z. There are no files starting with J, but these could be placed wherever it is convenient. Since it is not critical to the research, I will leave the full list of contents of the cabinet off of the website.